If you want to understand the power imbalance between the United States and Israel, the farce over Biden’s broken promise to Palestinians to reopen the former U.S. consulate in Jerusalem is a good place to start. The State Department has beseeched Israel to relent in its opposition to the reopening. But the Israeli government is adamant against it. And guess who wins?
Though the timing of the Israeli military decision to amend its open-fire policy may appear sudden and without much context, the decision is still ominous, nonetheless. When a country’s military decides that shooting a child in the back without any proof that the alleged ‘criminal’ posed any danger whatsoever is a legal act, the international community must take notice.
Several Palestinians were injured and 63-year-old Ghadeer Fuqaha Masalmeh was killed on Friday, as a wave of Israeli settler attacks on Palestinians and their homes has swept across the occupied West Bank. Masalmeh is the third Palestinian to be killed in the West Bank over the past week. 2021 has seen a staggering rise in settler violence, with UN OCHA reporting at least 450 settler attacks against Palestinians and their property as of December 6th.
The Israeli military has changed its rules of engagement to allow its forces to fire on Palestinians who have thrown stones or firebombs even when they no longer pose any danger. The rules will only be applied to Palestinian stonethrowers, though Jewish settlers run riot in the West Bank. The new rule is a sop to Israeli settlers, the IDF’s clientele.
Israel’s 11-day offensive on Gaza last May claimed 259 Palestinian lives, and the UK nonprofit Airwars estimated that between 151 and 192 were “non-combatant” civilians. On just one day Israel killed more than 56 civilians in what has come to be known as the al-Wahda street massacre, while targeting tunnels in Gaza City. Of these, at least 25 fatalities were likely children.
During an arrest raid in Nablus city, Israeli forces shot a Palestinian man in the head, killing him, and reportedly injured two others after running them over with a military jeep. Three days prior, the army shot and killed another Palestinian man in Beita.
According to Defense for Children International – Palestine (DCIP), 15-year-old Mohammad Nidal Younis Mousa from Nablus was shot and killed by a private Israeli security guard in the early hours of Monday morning during an alleged car ramming attack. According to DCIP says Mousa is the 17th Palestinian minor to be killed by Israeli forces in the West Bank and East Jerusalem this year.
This Saturday, a Palestinian man stabbed an Israeli Jew close to the Damascus Gate in Jerusalem (inflicting moderate wounds). He then ran towards Border Police officers who shot him several times – notably twice when he was already laying on the ground, incapacitated. Politicians all over the mainstream political spectrum hailed the act of murder.
Israeli settler violence in the West Bank isn’t an isolated incident. Rather, nearly every week settlers from nearby agricultural outposts terrorize the Palestinians of Masafer Yatta as they take over their land. “Settler violence is only part of Israeli colonist goals,” Ali Awad, a Palestinian activist, tells Mondoweiss. “These people are used as tools — justified by racist laws — for committing ethnic cleansing against the Palestinians.”
I work for one of the leading Palestinian human rights organizations, Al-Haq, which was recently declared a “terrorist organization” by the Israeli regime along with five prominent civil society organizations in Palestine. Friends and acquaintances keep asking me how it feels to be a member of a “terrorist organization”. I always respond by saying: it seems like we’re doing something right.